Amy Andrychowicz Of Get Busy Gardening: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Sun exposure — Most vegetables will grow best with 6+ hours of sunlight per day. So make sure to choose a sunny location for your garden. To figure it out, check the location every hour and note whether or not it’s in the sun. That way you’ll know if that area will work for a vegetable garden.
As we all know, inflation has really increased the price of food. Many people have turned to home gardening to grow their own food. Many have tried this and have been really successful. But others struggle to produce food in their own garden. What do you need to know to create a successful vegetable garden to grow your own food? In this interview series, called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food” we are talking to experts in vegetable gardening who can share stories and insights from their experiences.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Amy Andrychowicz.
Amy Andrychowicz is the founder and CEO of Get Busy Gardening, and author of the book Vertical Vegetables: Simple Projects that Deliver More Yield in Less Space. Amy is a passionate gardener who enjoys growing vegetables, herbs, annuals, perennials, succulents, tropical plants, and houseplants — you name, she’s grown it! As a life-long gardener herself, she has devoted her career to helping new gardeners learn through guidance, encouragement, and advice that is easy to understand. She loves sharing her knowledge, and strongly believes that there is no such thing as a brown thumb — anyone can be a gardener if they want to learn.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”?
I was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN, and currently live in San Diego, CA. My passion for gardening came from my parents — my dad enjoys digging outside in the garden, and mom my has always had a collection of beautiful houseplants.
I’ve always loved helping people become better gardeners, which began with me being the go-to gardening guru for my friends and family. One day I started to realize that there was a common pattern in the questions they were asking. Since I found myself answering those same frequently asked questions over and over, I decided to start documenting my answers in a personal online journal. But I wanted it to be more than just a journal that I shared only with them. So in 2009, I decided to start a blog where I could share my answers with everyone else in the world who have those same questions.
My little blog took off and quickly became wildly popular. Now it has grown to become a major gardening website and a trustworthy resource for new and expert gardeners alike.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
1. Determination — I have always been a very determined person. Once I set my mind on doing something, I will not stop until I successfully complete it. This trait has helped drive me to be successful in both gardening and business, and kept me going in both the difficult early days, as well as the times when growth has been slow.
2. Obsession — After buying my first house and becoming responsible for a yard of my own, I became obsessed to learn everything there was to know about gardening. I was constantly experimenting with any plant I could get my hands on, always pushing the limits of my climate and growing zone, and learning from both my successes and failures. It was this obsession that cultivated my wealth of knowledge, and also gave me the confidence to start my own business.
3. Passion — Not only do I have the passion for growing the best garden and business that I can, I also have a strong passion for helping others learn. Between social media, emails, and my website, I get a lot of questions. I try to answer every one of those questions the best I can, and I pride myself on giving people accurate and trustworthy information, delivered in a way that anyone can understand.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is from the movie Shawshank Redemption: “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.” My big life dream was to start my own gardening business, and be my own boss. That quote resonated with me so much through my life that I named my website and company “Get Busy Gardening”, because to me, gardening is living.
Are you working on any interesting or exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
My latest project, and the biggest change of my career (and life!) is learning how to garden in a completely different growing zone. I gardened most of my life in one of the coldest and harshest climates in the US (zone 4b), and now I live in frost-free zone 10b. Getting used to being able to garden year round, and figuring out when to plant everything have been exciting, but also challenging. It truly is like learning how to garden all over again. Making this huge shift in my life and career will not only help me deepen my gardening knowledge, it will also help my readers. Because now I can answer warm-climate gardening questions from first hand experience, grow a larger range plants, and experiment in ways that I never could before. I’m very excited about this new adventure, and can’t wait to share all of my trials, tribulations, and successes with my readers and followers.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about creating a successful garden to grow your own food. Can you help articulate a few reasons why people should be interested in making their own vegetable garden? For example, how is it better for our health? For the environment? For our wallet?
Growing your own food is great for your health because it gets you outside and keeps you active. Plus, you control exactly how your food is grown, meaning you can avoid all of those nasty synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers. You can grow healthy, organic foods for a fraction of what you would pay at the grocery store. Having all of that fresh produce around all of the time also encourages you and your family to eat more veggies. Kids also love to eat what they grow, which means they will eat more fresh vegetables too. Plus homegrown produce tastes so much better than anything you can get at the grocery store!
Where should someone start if they would like to start a garden? Which resources would you recommend? Which plants should they start with?
If you want to start a garden, my biggest advice is to start small. Choose 3–5 of the vegetables that your family eats the most, and try growing those in a small garden bed or pots first. That way you know they will get eaten, and you won’t be overwhelmed trying to maintain a large plot. Once you find success with those, try a few new ones next year, and slowly build up to a larger garden from there.
Can you please share your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable Garden To Grow Your Own Food”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
- Healthy soil — Most new gardeners think that “dirt is dirt”, and I hear that all the time. But, when it comes to gardening, soil is the foundation for everything. You can’t grow healthy or highly productive plants in poor-quality, nutrient-deficient dirt. The first step for a successful vegetable garden is to build up rich, fertile soil that will nourish your plants.
- Sun exposure — Most vegetables will grow best with 6+ hours of sunlight per day. So make sure to choose a sunny location for your garden. To figure it out, check the location every hour and note whether or not it’s in the sun. That way you’ll know if that area will work for a vegetable garden.
- Location — In addition to finding a sunny spot, it’s also important to make sure the location is suitable for growing vegetables. Avoid areas in your yard where water pools, or where the soil stays overly dry (like under the eaves of your house). Also check the ground to make sure it is workable, and not full of rocks, pipes, or tree roots, for example.
- Average frost dates — Before planting anything, it’s important to know your average first and last frost dates so you know exactly when to plant your vegetables, and how long your growing season is.
- Garden size — If you’ve never grown vegetables before, make sure to start small. Don’t dig up a huge plot for your first garden, or you may find yourself quickly overwhelmed. Instead try planting a few vegetables in your existing flower beds, or even in pots the first year, just to get the hang of it.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a garden? What specifically can be done to avoid those errors?
By far the biggest mistake new gardeners make is trying to do too much too fast — I see it time and time again. They get really excited and plant a large garden with tons of different types of vegetables. Then, when the heat of summer kicks in and the weeds, bugs, and diseases start to take over, they quickly become overwhelmed and give up, and their garden becomes an overgrown weedy mess. The best way to avoid this stressful situation is to start small. Once you have success with a few plants, then you can add more every year, or as you build up your experience and confidence.
What are some of the best ways to keep the costs of gardening down?
Gardening doesn’t have to be expensive, and you can grow a lot of food with very little money. From upcycling to composting, shopping plant and yard sales, to buying used tools and equipment, there are tons of ways to keep the cost of gardening low. Rather than buying mature plants, try growing them from seeds, or trade extra seedlings with friends and family. Instead of spending money on expensive amendments, use leaves, straw, and kitchen scraps to naturally enhance your soil (and keep the weeds down too!). Or start collecting rainwater to irrigate your garden and save money on your water bill.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Making it easy for home gardeners to donate their excess crops to a local food shelf would be great. Most gardeners find themselves with an overabundance from their vegetable gardens, which is a good problem to have. But many home gardeners are too busy or simply not interested in canning and preserving their harvests, so many times that food ends up going to waste. If they could leave the excess on their front step, or drop it off somewhere, then the community would also benefit.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I would love to have breakfast or lunch with Joanna Gaines (although I’d probably be too nervous to eat anything!). She is so humble and genuine, and just seems like an all around nice person to spend time with. Plus the way she has had such incredible success building her business and personal brand into not only an enterprise, but a household name, is truly amazing. All of that while raising five children and maintaining a successful marriage — she’s a huge inspiration for women of all ages and backgrounds. I would love to learn how she has done it all, and get as much advice from her as possible.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow me on my website, Get Busy Gardening at https://getbusygardening.com. Once you’re there, be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter. You can also follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for the time you spent on this interview. We wish you only continued success and good health.
Thank you for the opportunity, it was fun.
Amy Andrychowicz Of Get Busy Gardening: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Successful Vegetable… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.